Children with developmental reading disabilities (RD) frequently display impaired working memory functioning. However, research has been divergent regarding the characteristics of the deficit. Our investigation addressed this controversy by assessing Baddeley's working memory model as a whole rather than focusing on particular aspects of it, as has been done by much of the research to date. Participants included 20 children with RD and 20 typical readers between the ages of 9 and 13. The phonological loop, visual-spatial sketchpad, and central executive were assessed according to Baddeley's model. The results demonstrated that children with RD have an impaired phonological loop but intact visual-spatial sketchpad and central executive functioning as compared to controls. In terms of the phonological loop, the deficit appears to be specific to the phonological store. Furthermore, our research supports a relationship between phonological processing and phonological loop functioning.

The Karnofsky Performance Status appears to be the most widely used scale for objective assessment of medical patients' quality of life. Evidence for its reliability and validity is reviewed and new data presented. Tests of inter-rater reliability, concurrent validity, and discriminant validity indicate that, with standardized observational procedures based on a mental status exam, the Karnofsky scale is acceptably reliable and valid as a global measure but it does not adequately capture the conceptual domain of quality of life.

The present study investigated the loci of the information-processing delay that characteristically follows severe closed-head injury (CHI). Sternberg's additive-factors logic was used to determine the effects of severe CHI on the central information-processing stages of stimulus encoding, memory comparison, and decision-making/response-selection. The task variables used to define the stages operationally were stimulus quality, memory set size, and stimulus-response compatibility. Twenty subjects who had sustained a severe CHI more than 18 months earlier and 20 matched control subjects completed a stimulus encoding by response selection task in Experiment 1, and a Sternberg high-speed memory scanning task in Experiment 2. The CHI group performed the stimulus encoding and decision-making/response-selection stages of processing significantly slower than did the control group. However, no significant group differences were found on the memory comparison stage, suggesting that memory comparison processes may be relatively intact in long-term patients with severe head trauma. The results are discussed in relation to a global and a late-specificity hypothesis of central processing deficits following severe CHI. The possibility that cognitive processes demanding less attention may be more resilient to injury is also considered.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a 9-week memory notebook treatment for closed-headinjured (CHI) participants with documented memory deficits. Eight participants who had sustained a severe CHI more than 2 years earlier were allocated to receive either notebook training or supportive therapy. Memory outcome indicators, which differed in sensitivity to detect everyday memory failures (EMFs), were administered before treatment, immediately after treatment, and at a 6month follow-up. At posttreatment, the notebook training group reported significantly fewer observed EMFs on a daily checklist measure than the supportive therapy group. Although in the same direction, this finding no longer reached significance at follow-up. No significant treatment effects were found for the laboratory-based memory measures at posttreatment or follow-up. Although the present results are to be considered preliminary because of the small sample size, they suggest that notebook training has the potential to help individuals compensate for everyday memory problems and that the methods used to measure training efficacy are important.